Churches join together to present Maundy Thursday cantata, Tenebrae service

FINDLAY — Five Hancock County churches are coming together to present "The Shadow of the Cross" during Holy Week. The cantata and Tenebrae service will begin 7 p.m. on Maundy Thursday at St. Paul's Church, 218 E. Sandusky St. The 35-member choir is comprised of people from all of the churches including St. Paul's, Mount Cory Church of Faith, Pleasant View Church in Bluffton, Good Shepherd Church of Benton Ridge and Rawson New Hope. "It's been fun to have a group that big, and they are doing a wonderful job even though they're not used to singing with one another," said Gail Malloy, choral director at St. Paul's. Malloy and Nancy Thomas, a former music teacher who was the director and is still one of the accompanists for worship services at the Mount Cory church, are co-directors of the service. Malloy said the idea came from Thomas' daughter, Emily Thomas, who is the accompanist at St. Paul's. "She approached me and asked me about doing this," said Malloy. "These churches, with the exception of St. Paul's, lost their choirs after 2020. So they were wanting to know if we could do something like this." And St. Paul's hasn't presented a cantata for a long time, she noted. "It's just hard to get people to commit to time," she said. "But I really loved the idea of giving these four churches a choir experience, you know, because I'm a choir director and have been. That was my occupation, too." Malloy taught choral music when she was a teacher at the McComb Local Schools. "And it just seemed so sad to me because I know what they went through when 2020 hit, and people started to do the online thing. It was hard," she said. Malloy said she was worried that St. Paul's wouldn't keep its choir either. "We were doing ensembles, like we only had maybe three girls on a Sunday. It's like, is this going to just fold or what's going to happen? So I thought, I need to do this," she recalled. And she likes this particular cantata as well. "It was written by Lloyd Larson, and I'd done a lot of his music and he's a very good arranger. And plus this is a Tenebrae service which some people might not know about," said Malloy. The Rev. Mike Noggle, pastor of Mount Cory Church of Faith and Pleasant View Church, explained that a Tenebrae service is also known as a "service of darkness," as Tenebrae in Latin means darkness. According to some sources, these services date back to the 4th Century and are traditionally observed during Holy Week, focusing on the final hours of Jesus' life and crucifixion. Seven lighted candles are gradually extinguished during the evening to symbolize the gradual and deepening darkness as Christ's death became imminent and then final, he said. Typically at the conclusion of the service, attendees are asked to leave in silence and reflection. Malloy said, from what she understands, a Tenebrae service was a time when they would take everything out of the sanctuary including the candles and cloths so they could clean for Easter. "And they liked the way it stripped out all the color and all the fancy stuff and just left the bare bones because you're approaching a very serious time in the Christian faith when Jesus was suffering and going through all kinds of things in addition to being crucified on the cross," she said. The narration is also good, she said, but they needed the right narrator. "I know when I listened to the recording and read the score, I said, I don't think this is even going to be able to be pulled off if we don't have a really strong narrator because he's going to have to tell the complete story in a way that keeps the audience connected and doesn't bore them or fumble through the words," she said. Merlin Marshall was selected. A member of the Mount Cory church, Malloy said he's previously done the narration for his cantata. "He really does a wonderful job of acting it out by the way he inflects his voice and everything so he makes it very expressive," she said. In addition to the cantata, communion will be served and Emily Thomas will perform "Via Dolorosa" as a hand bell solo. Via Dolorosa is the name of the street where Jesus had to carry the cross to Calvary. It's called "the way of suffering," Malloy said. The words will be included in the program The service is free to attend and will last about 1½ hours. "It's a solemn service. We're asking the congregation to sing along on a couple of songs," said Malloy. "We are also asking everyone after the lights go out and after there's a minute of reflection and the choir exits, we're asking the congregation to exit in silence." "I know it's going to be hard because there's no applause in the service, and that's different for people, too, because they're used to thanking the choir for their work. And we get that," she said. "But we want the focus to all be on Christ and His sacrifice."